Improving prediction of intervention effects across populations

In public health, there is frequently an implicit assumption that an intervention that works in one place will work in another. This is often not the case in practice, where expansion of interventions may yield disappointingly null results or even unexpected adverse effects. In this talk, I will discuss how some of my recent work in transportability and mediation can help better predict how an intervention will work in a new population. Using the Moving to Opportunity housing voucher experiment's effects on adolescent mental health and substance use as a case study, I will illustrate how these contributions can help improve understanding of
1) How an intervention may work differently for different types of people
2) How to optimally target interventions to populations that stand to benefit most